Demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision).
Learning Outcome 1: Revision
Learning Outcome 1 states that students should demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity, as well as editing and proofreading. At the beginning of this course, I would agree that I saw the revision process as a, what Nancy Sommers in her piece “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers,” calls a “thesaurus philosophy of writing.” Meaning, I didn’t go very deep into the revision of my work, when I revised, I mainly focused on the surface problems such as grammatical errors and correct wording, not the bigger issues. Sommers would claim that I was “blind to revision,” that I lacked “a set of strategies that help identify the ‘something larger.’ At the beginning of ENG 110, Sommers would be correct saying these things about me. By the end of the semester, with my Big Data Analytics paper, I’d say I had become more of an experienced writer and revisionist. With this assignment, I did multiple revisions, starting with one that focused on the big ideas of the paper. In this draft, I made sure that all of my claims would make sense when brought together, to ensure that my readers wouldn’t be confused. I had to change quite a few things because in my first draft, my stance on Big Data seemed to sway a little, and some of the quotes that I had for evidence didn’t really fit all that well. On my second revision, I focused on the smaller issues that my paper had, such as comma splices and run-on sentences, which helped me pull my paper into its final form. By the end of writing my big data paper, I would no longer say that I saw the revision process as a thesaurus philosophy of writing, but instead, a way for me to adapt my essay into its greatest form by looking at the whole picture.
